


Day by day

by Sororising



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Little bit of angst, M/M, More Fraction Clint than MCU, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 06:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sororising/pseuds/Sororising
Summary: Clint had nothing to do with Bucky before this. There are no hidden obligations or buried memories to deal with. Bucky can just be whatever version of himself he feels like being - there isn’t the same kind of pressure he knows he’d be feeling if he’d ended up living with Steve.Clint is just his friend. There is nobecause.It’s nice.





	Day by day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Winterhawk Big Bang, inspired by the wonderful art by Nuria aka ruinscollector on tumblr. Go look at the art [here!](http://ruinscollector.tumblr.com/post/168387449477/so-here-is-my-piece-for-the-winterhwawk-reverse)

* * *

Day 1:

"Bucky, meet Lucky," Barton says, before making a face. "Rhymes. Did not figure that out till now. Anyway, yeah. Don't let him near clothes you like, he'll try and attack them."

Bucky looks down at the dog that's lazily nudging his kneecap. "What, he won't attack clothes I hate?"

"Sod's law," Barton says, very clearly trying to sound annoyed but failing as he smiles down at Lucky.

It’s been a very long few weeks. Bucky honestly just wants to sleep in a room where he can lock himself in for about a day. He isn’t even sure how he ended up agreeing to live with Barton. He just remembers thinking how living with Steve would just end up being painful for both of them, and he doesn’t want to be put into protective custody or whatever else has been recommended to keep someone like him safe. Or - everyone else safe from someone like him, is more like it.

He barely feels like a person yet. He calls himself Bucky because he doesn’t know what other name to use, and because deep down he thinks it does feel right - or like it _could_ feel right, which isn’t too far away.

“Clint has a building,” Romanoff had said after Steve and Maria Hill - who’d wanted the protective custody option - had gone back and forth for a while. She’d said it very casually, as though it had just occurred to her, which Bucky was certain it hadn’t. 

And now he’s here. For the time being. Staying in the apartment of an almost-stranger who thinks arrows make more sense than bullets.

What has he got himself into?

* * *

Day 2:

Bucky sleeps. And eats, briefly, and then goes back to sleep.

* * *

Day 3:

Clint leaves a note on the fridge asking him to take Lucky out if he can. Scrawled at the bottom is an afterthought: _but dude its cool if u cant i totally get it dont worry._

Bucky does take Lucky outside for a few minutes. The yard that belongs to the building is empty and in terrible condition. There are no people. Bucky still feels anxious the whole time.

* * *

Day 5:

Bucky finds himself making coffee for two people when he wakes up. He doesn't let himself think about it too much, just leaves the second mug where Barton - Clint, he reminds himself; apparently being called Barton had brought up some bad memories, something to do with Clint’s dad - will see it when he comes out of the bathroom.

* * *

Day 15:

Clint has days where he doesn't like wearing his hearing aids, and he isn't the best at lip reading.

Bucky starts learning sign language. He tells himself it's because he doesn't like the fact that Clint and Natasha can talk about him behind his back. He finds a good youtube channel, and then spends the next three hours in a fascinated loop of recommended videos until he ends up on a 30 minute one entirely dedicated to kittens falling over their own legs trying to learn how to walk.

The internet is so _weird._

* * *

Day 19:

Bucky starts going to therapy. It's exhausting. He has no words for how exhausting it is.

* * *

Day 26:

Dr Elliot, his main therapist, is starting to feel like someone he can trust. Clint is, too. 

That's more than Bucky had expected, if he's being honest with himself.

Lucky chews up his shoelaces but looks so apologetic Bucky doesn't even mind that much.

A few hours later, Lucky chews up the rest of the shoe.

* * *

Day 32:

It’s Clint that points out just how long Bucky’s hair is. It’s not like Bucky hasn’t noticed, in a detached kind of way; he’d have to be pretty unaware to not pay attention to the way it gets caught on things or hides his face when it’s down.

But - he hasn’t wanted to pay too much attention to his body, and he guesses his hair is a part of that. It’s not like he has any particular feelings about it being long, it just kept growing and it seemed easier to let it. 

The hiding behind it is kind of nice, though.

“I can cut hair decently,” Clint says, in a voice that’s clearly supposed to sound casual. “Also I’m excellent at painting nails, if you ever feel like it.”

Bucky tries to think of a good response to that. “Uh. I’m - good. Thanks, though.” He doesn’t know how to explain that having someone approach his head - especially from behind - with sharp metal objects seems like a potential disaster. 

One of the nicest things about Clint is that he doesn’t push Bucky to talk about things he isn’t ready to.

Clint nods, not looking offended in the slightest. “Cool,” he says. “Let me know if you ever change your mind.”

* * *

Day 34:

Steve’s visits always leave Bucky feeling tired, even when they don’t talk about anything in particular. Steve’s presence is overwhelming, draining in a way that Bucky hates himself for feeling. 

It’s a little better when Sam’s there too. Steve seems lighter, somehow, when Sam’s around, and there’s less pressure on Bucky to act like he knows what he’s doing with his life.

But there’s still a slight tension between him and Sam - the whole attempted murder thing will do that, he guesses. And he knows it’s going to take a long time before Steve can really see who he is now, rather than some messed up ghost version of a guy that Bucky’s pretty sure is either gone or changed enough that he might as well.

Natasha is easier because she lets him know exactly what she’s thinking - a rare gift from her; he doesn’t need Clint to tell him that. But it’s harder as well, because while bits and pieces of memories from his friendship with Steve are returning, mostly in the form of dreams that he tries to hold on to the next morning, he still has no recollection of knowing Natasha other than the gut feeling that says he does.

He’s learning to trust those instincts, since they’re what led to him breaking the Soldier’s conditioning, but he doesn’t like them. He’d lived for decades inside a sort of fog, trusting blindly in whatever orders his handlers gave him. It’s likely that Bucky’s - that _his_ \- personality had made other appearances over the years, but since he’s pretty certain he’d have been wiped after every incident, he isn’t sure how much he’ll ever really know.

That’s the worst part. The not knowing. He’s _in recovery,_ is what he’s told over and over again, and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of real timeline for it. _There’s no need to put pressure on yourself,_ one of the therapists tells him. _Take as much time as you need. Your life is your own._

Clint is like a weird island of calm in the middle of all Bucky’s uncertainty. Clint isn’t a straightforward person, no matter how much he wants people to assume he is, but he’s easy enough to understand once you know him well enough. And best of all, he doesn’t ever seem to expect anything intangible from Bucky. Not memories, or stories, or recognition. No, the things Clint asks for are simple, definable tasks. Take Lucky out once a day. Make sure you separate the recycling before taking it downstairs. Decide what to watch on TV.

Clint’s requests are clearly stated, they make sense, and they aren’t life or death. It’s a mix of refreshing and comforting, and Bucky knows they didn’t set a timeline for him living here back when it first started, but he already knows he doesn’t want to leave.

* * *

Day 38:

Bucky meets Kate Bishop when he’s taking Lucky out before they turn in for the night.

“You live with Barton, right?” she asks, as soon as he’s registered her presence.

“Um,” he says, not used to strangers talking to him. He really doesn’t think she’s Hydra, but maybe that’s the whole point. The most effective undercover operative is one who no-one would ever suspect, after all.

“Tell him I’m waiting on my next lesson,” is all she says, before going back into their building. Bucky has no idea how many people live in the apartment block, but he does know that Clint’s got reasoning behind every tenant there, from a couple who couldn’t afford much rent with a new baby to an old man on the ground floor who lived there before Clint acquired the building and now stays on as some kind of caretaker.

He relays the message when he’s back in the apartment, and Clint just nods. “Oh, yeah. I’m teaching her archery. I mean, I say teaching. She’s going to be better than me one day, so, like, I have to learn more just to keep up.”

Bucky’s seen Clint shoot, so he finds it hard to believe his statement, but he also knows that Clint doesn’t really lie. 

“She seemed nice,” he says, a little doubtfully. 

Clint just laughs. “Kate’s a lot of things, but I wouldn’t say _nice._ She used to come round for dinner, before. I can invite her over if you want to meet her properly?”

“Sure,” Bucky says, not sure if he’s agreeing because he feels bad - _before_ very clearly means before Bucky had moved in - or because he’s genuinely curious. A little of both, maybe.

* * *

Day 40:

“I never really told you about Loki,” Clint says, staring at the commercials after an episode of Brooklyn 99 has just finished playing. 

“No,” Bucky agrees, making the sign at the same time, since Clint’s wearing a beanie and Bucky doesn’t think his hearing aids are in. 

“Do you want me to?”

Bucky thinks about it. He’s picked up the basics, from a combination of Natasha and Steve. He knows it’s one of the main reasons why Steve had agreed to Bucky moving in here - not that he could have stopped anything, a rebellious little voice in the back of Bucky’s head points out, but he could have made the whole situation more difficult if he’d really wanted to.

“If you want to tell me,” he says carefully, signing along awkwardly. A combination of Clint and youtube have explained that ASL sentences are constructed very differently to spoken English ones, so Bucky knows that his word order is most likely nonsense. He feels a bit self-conscious about it, but not enough to stop signing.

Clint makes a noise that Bucky doesn’t know how to interpret. 

Then they keep watching TV.

Later, Bucky wonders if he’s disappointed that Clint didn’t end up sharing the full story, but he dismisses the thought almost as soon as it occurs to him. He knows better than anyone why someone would want to keep certain things to themself, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with shame.

When you’ve had so much choice taken away from you, even something as simple as choosing whether or not to talk can have power.

* * *

Day 49:

Kate doesn’t question Bucky’s presence in Clint’s apartment, which seems odd when he thinks about it too much. He decides he doesn’t want to know what explanation Clint had given. Usually he doesn’t like knowing that people are talking about him behind his back, but there are some occasions where not having to talk about himself makes the trade worth it.

* * *

Day 53:

Bucky wakes up to the acrid smell of urine. _Not again,_ is his first thought, before he hears Lucky whining softly from the end of the bed.

“Aw,” he says, instantly awake. He’s either asleep or awake these days. No lie-ins for him. “Bad dog.” His tone doesn’t sound angry at all, which is all that Lucky will hear. 

He thinks for a few seconds. The Winter Soldier wouldn’t have cared about a little thing like a dog pissing on his sheets. He’d have just detached himself from the smell and gone right back to sleep. The body must be kept in good condition, after all, and a couple hours sleep every night when a mission was in progress was part of that.

Bucky sighs. Gets up, gently nudging Lucky off the bed as he starts gathering up the bedding. It isn’t much of a mess, not really. Hell, even before he was the Soldier he’d slept in worse situations during the war. 

But - there had been no choice, then.

He loads the sheets into the washing machine, but doesn’t switch it on. Clint won’t have his hearing aids in, but the machine is old and Bucky guesses that the way it vibrates against the wall might be enough to wake someone like Clint up. He isn’t sure, but he doesn’t feel like testing the theory. Laundry can wait until tomorrow.

He goes to the cupboard where they keep fresh sheets, only to find it empty except for a couple of towels and a stack of pillowcases. Now that he thinks about it, the pile of stuff to be washed had looked pretty high. 

He hovers for a moment, feeling unsure in a way he isn’t used to. He doesn’t miss anything about being the Soldier, not really, but he can admit to himself that the sheer amount of decisions he has to make these days can get kind of overwhelming. Back then every choice, no matter how small, was made for him. Use this gun, wait here for this amount of time, drink this, don’t fight back.

Now every day is a network of little questions - eggs or oatmeal? Does Lucky need a bath? Was that noise a neighbour or Hydra? Could the neighbours _be_ Hydra? Why won’t Clint let Bucky keep a gun in the house? How many protein shakes is too many to drink at once? How long would it take him to be decently accurate with a longbow? Why do the commercials on TV last longer than the actual program?

And on, and on, and on, until some questions have become so automatic that they’re just routine. He doesn’t know if that’s how everyone else thinks, or if they don’t bother to question every aspect of their daily life, but he doesn’t really care. It’s a small price to pay for all the good things he has now.

But as he looks at the empty cupboard, he realises that for whatever reason he has no idea what steps he should take next. Every option seems very slightly wrong, and he’s in a weird mood where _slightly wrong_ could turn into something catastrophic. 

Maybe he’s just being dramatic. Whatever. That doesn’t change the fact that a lack of sheets is making him feel worse than staring down the barrel of a gun used to.

What is he supposed to do?

He hears a noise behind him, and turns round as quickly as he can while still looking like he’s in control of his reactions. It’s Clint - obviously it’s Clint, he tells himself, who the fuck else would it be? He hopes he wasn’t too loud moving around.

“What’s up?” Clint asks through a yawn.

Bucky hasn’t bothered to turn any lights on, because it’s easy enough for someone like him to find his way around in the dark, but he reaches over to flick one on now. Clint winces at the sudden brightness, putting one arm over his eyes, so Bucky waits until he’s sure Clint can see him properly before clumsily signing _Lucky - bed - accident._

He knows he got the first two signs right, but he isn’t sure about _accident._ He can tell Clint got the gist of it though.

“Shit,” Clint says, yawning again. “He was maybe having a bad dream or something. Sorry.”

Bucky just shrugs. It isn’t the end of the world. He likes Lucky, likes that there are no expectations from him other than head pats and an occasional refilling of his food bowl.

Clint looks at Bucky. “I’m not doing laundry at three in the morning. You cool with sharing?”

With - what? Bucky thinks that through. He tries not to react outwardly to Clint’s casual offer - he doesn’t even think _Steve_ would want to share a bed with him, although it’s true that he hasn’t dissociated and attacked anyone yet.

Dissociated, sure. But not attacked. Baby steps, or what the fuck ever.

“I guess?” he says after a pause that’s much too long. He doesn’t have a clue how to convey uncertainty in ASL, so he just nods his hand up and down but shrugs while he’s doing it. 

“No worries either way,” Clint says easily. “But you’re too tall to stretch out on the couch.”

So Bucky ends up lying next to Clint for the last few hours of the night, listening to his faint snores and marvelling at both how normal and how weird the situation is. He doesn’t really sleep, but he rests, and his body can get by on much less than the four hours he’d already managed before Lucky’s unconventional attempt at an alarm.

It’s - nice, he decides. Still weird, but nice. Clint genuinely doesn’t seem wary around Bucky at all anymore. Which could be a very elaborate con, of course, but for once Bucky realises he wants to take this at face value.

Steve is his friend because Steve is his friend. And always will be. They’ve been through too much for that truth to change. Natasha is his maybe-friend partly because of their history - history which Bucky still doesn’t fully remember, but he knows it’s important - and Sam is kind to him because Sam loves Steve and Steve loves Bucky. 

Clint had nothing to do with Bucky before this. There are no hidden obligations or buried memories to deal with. Bucky can just be whatever version of himself he feels like being - there isn’t the same kind of pressure he knows he’d be feeling if he’d ended up living with Steve.

Clint is just his friend. There is no _because._

It’s nice.

* * *

Day 56:

Bucky can’t stop thinking about sleeping in the same bed as Clint. Sleeping, resting, whatever. He’s not about to start demanding hugs off people, but he does feel something inside him that wants more contact with his friends than he’s getting right now.

Not that he has a clue how to bring it up. 

He’s slicing olives in half while Clint pokes at a pan of slowly-warming tomato sauce. They’re making pizza, which is about the most complicated thing Clint can cook. Bucky doesn’t have that many feelings about cooking one way or another, but he likes eating good food - especially now his stomach can actually handle it - and he likes repetitive tasks. So he’s more than fine being stuck with all the prep work while Clint tries to assemble something edible.

He doesn’t jump when Clint nudges his shoulder, but it’s a near thing. He stops cutting for a couple of seconds, though it’s his left hand that’s holding the olives steady so it’s not like he’s about to damage anything.

Then Clint’s arm moves round Bucky’s shoulders, slow enough that moving away would be the simplest thing in the world, and squeezes for just a moment. “I like having a roommate, you know,” is all he says, but Bucky carries both the words and the half-hug with him for the next few days, reaching for them in the night when he needs to remind himself where - and who - he is.

* * *

Day 57:

“Is the haircut offer still open?”

Bucky feels oddly nervous asking the question, even though there’s no particular reason Clint would have changed his mind. Hell, Clint’s probably barely thought about it since he first asked - a haircut isn’t really a momentous occasion for most people, Bucky’s self-aware enough to know that.

“Course,” Clint says, then winces as Lucky drops heavily down onto his feet. “Uh, find a chair? I’ll get this lump out of the way."

“Distract yourself,” Clint says a few minutes later, dropping a newspaper into Bucky’s lap. 

It’s over a year old, but Bucky feels atemporal enough that it hardly makes a difference. He caught news from the decades he lived through in contextless flashes that half the time were just wiped away hours later. He’s tried to catch up, but it turns out that twentieth century history isn’t exactly conducive to good mental health, at least not for him. Especially when he still has no idea how big a part he played in it.

 _You shaped the century,_ he hears, insidious and unrelenting in the back of his mind, and he clenches his jaw. Pierce is the last things he needs to be thinking about right now.

Bucky tenses the second he sees scissors out of the corner of his eye. He loosens his grip on the paper - he has no clue why Clint has one that’s so old, but he doesn’t want to break anything if he doesn’t have to.

“Um. I can talk?” Clint says, hovering the scissors so they’re visible to Bucky.

He nods, and centres himself again. Lucky wanders past, sniffing at his leg for a moment. It grounds him, for some reason. Maybe it’s that Hydra had no use for dogs, or just that even if they had done Lucky - who’s a slightly overweight mix of Lab and something else - would hardly have been a good candidate for their needs. 

Clint starts cutting Bucky’s hair at the same time as he starts telling a story from his early days at SHIELD. Each sentence sounds more unbelievable than the next, until Bucky decides he can’t go a second longer without calling bullshit. He raises his right hand up, careful to keep his head and neck still, and makes the sign for _lie._

“Fuck you,” Clint says, very agreeably. “Lucky! Don’t climb that, you’re not coordinated enough. And hey, you know what Nat’s capable of. That’s where we got the idea to set up a network of escape routes through the SHIELD vents.” Clint pauses for a few seconds as he makes a few snips - which sound horribly loud in the stillness, but Bucky’s distracted enough that they don’t bother him. “It may also be where Fury got the idea to set up security cameras inside the walls. But, uh. Could have been a coincidence.”

“Sure it could have,” Bucky says dryly, realising with no small amount of shock that he’s actually enjoying himself. Clint is a good storyteller, with a seemingly endless supply of weird life events to draw from, and while Bucky isn’t about to forget what’s happening, the jokes and exaggerated stories really are keeping him distracted from the sensation of metal blades working away close to his scalp.

Hopefully Clint’s as good at cutting hair as he is at funny anedotes, he thinks to himself. Though it’s not like many people are going to see the results either way.

About twenty minutes later, after Clint’s frowned at Bucky’s ears for at least a quarter of that time, he’s done.

“Go look in the mirror,” Clint says, patting Bucky’s shoulder. “I gotta take Lucky out. BRB.”

Bucky rolls his eyes at Clint saying weird text-speak out loud - _BRB_ and _be right back_ have the exact same amount of syllables, for fuck’s sake, then he stands up quickly.

He just wants to get it over with. He’d given Clint no direction other than _shorter, but not too short, I guess,_ and he’s half-afraid he’s going to look in the mirror and see the Bucky Barnes he’d been faced with all those months ago in the Smithsonian. A war relic, confined to colourless photographs in a museum.

But when he’s in the bathroom and meeting his reflection’s eyes - if only briefly, because for some odd reason he still finds that hard to do - he feels some unnamable tension leave his muscles.

It’s not long enough to tie up anymore, but it’s certainly not the short-back-and-sides look of a soldier. Nor is it a particularly modern look - the sides aren’t buzzed, and Clint’s followed the way his hair naturally falls. It’s soft, and a little wavy, and not easily confined to any one decade.

Bucky loves it. 

* * *

Day 60:

“I can’t stay here forever,” he tells Steve, on one of the rare visits where it’s just the two of them in the apartment. Well, the two of them plus Lucky, who loves Steve and keeps letting out these raspy little barks from where he’s lying on top of Clint’s favourite boots - he hasn’t moved to bite them, so Bucky’s letting him be for now.

Steve just looks thoughtful, which is a nice step up from all the horribly dramatic words like _anguished_ that could have been used to describe his face back when Bucky had first moved in with Clint. “Where would you go?”

It’s a reasonable question, so there’s no need for Bucky to feel as defensive as he does. “I have money,” he points out, because he does - Natasha had siphoned off a nice portion of the Hydra assets she’d managed to gain control of into an account for him; he doesn’t even know how much is in there. “I could buy somewhere. Probably.”

He knows that Steve wants to ask why Bucky doesn’t go out and walk around Brooklyn more. He knows that Steve had spent plenty of time doing exactly that back when he’d first had some time to himself after waking up in a new century - God, does Bucky wish Steve hadn’t been alone for that - but he also knows that those walks had been as much about self-flagellation and survivor’s guilt than actual pleasure, and that’s much more Steve’s thing than Bucky’s.

Bucky’s been tortured enough. He has no desire to put himself through anything else that’s only going to bring pain. He’ll get to seeing Brooklyn again. Maybe when the memory of his mother and sisters makes him want to do something other than curl up into a ball and scream.

“Clint likes having you here,” Steve says, which surprises Bucky. Not the Clint thing, he’d figured that much out for himself, but

He shrugs. “Whatever. I’ve got time, right?”

“Course you do, Buck.” Steve smiles at him, and Bucky almost can’t see the sadness hidden behind his eyes when he does. “All the time in the world.”

* * *

Day 61:

What Bucky hadn’t told Steve is that he thinks maybe he should move out because he’s starting to have some not-exactly-friendly feelings for Clint. 

As in, _more_ than friendly.

That isn’t something he knows how to deal with anymore, if he ever did. He decides to just stop having the feelings. That would be the most convenient option, after all, and he does like living here.

It won’t be a problem. He tells himself it won’t be, so it won’t be. Simple.

* * *

Day 63:

It turns out that switching off feelings when you’re trying your best to be a regular human being is not actually all that easy.

Damn.

* * *

Day 67:

Bucky is bored. In a way he isn’t used to. Sure, sometimes he feels kind of aimless, like there’s something he should be doing, but usually he can get rid of the feelings by taking Lucky out to the dog park that’s always mostly empty, or by doing yoga, or reading for a while.

Today he already knows that none of those things are going to cut it, and it’s only nine in the morning.

“You’kay? Clint asks, staring down at his giant mug of coffee like it holds the secrets of the universe in it.

“I want to do something different today,” Bucky says honestly as soon as Clint looks up.

“Hmm.” Clint takes another sip. “God, coffee is the best. The best. Uh. You could come with me? Like, I don’t know what Steve and Nat are telling you, but Sharon Carter and Maria Hill are kind of rebuilding SHIELD. Fury’s helping too, but in a, like, I want people to still think I’m dead kind of way. Y’know?”

Bucky blinks to himself for a few seconds. “Right,” he says finally. It’s very hard to ignore the fact that SHIELD might not be in need of a rebuild at all if it wasn’t for him.

That wouldn’t actually be any better, he reminds himself, because that would mean SHIELD was still full of undercover Hydra operatives. 

“Or you could go see what Kate’s up to,” Clint says. “She might have college today? Maybe?”

“I’ll come with you,” Bucky decides, for once letting himself speak without overthinking what he’s going to say. “I might even be able to help, right?”

And that - that feels like something warm in his chest, the feeling that he could be useful again. For something other than killing and destruction.

Sure, it’s likely that any relevant intel he might be able to dredge up from the depths of his memory might lead to plenty of death and destruction for whatever’s left of Hydra, but that’s hardly something that’s going to keep him up at night.

* * *

Day 68:

Therapy days make Bucky more tired than anything else. Especially when he has actual news to talk about, like his visit to SHIELD the day before, or the dinner Kate had invited herself to - dinner is a pretty loose description; they’d ordered an unholy amount of Thai food and ate it while watching Dog Cops - where she’d talked to Bucky about online courses that her college does, and how she could sign herself up for any that he wanted to do.

It had been a lot. But in a good way, which he makes sure to tell Dr Elliot so that she doesn’t recommend he dial back on any of it.

She’s happy for him, it turns out, which makes him feel a bit bad for doubting her reaction.

He still can’t quite get his head around the fact that his problems are more mundane than terrifying these days. Oh, he still has nightmares, and flashbacks, and the kind of nightmarish flashbacks that leave him panicking about Clint and Lucky and his new life being nothing more than a kind hallucination his mind has dreamt up to keep him from fighting back in the Chair.

But his good days are starting to outnumber the bad, and that’s all he feels he can ask for right now.

* * *

Day 76:

“Uh, just to put this out there,” Clint says, looking about as awkward as Bucky’s ever seen him - he does this thing where he twists his hands into the shape they’d be if there was a bow in them when he’s nervous about something; it’s not exactly a subtle tell. “But - shit. This is weird. You kind of look like you want to kiss me, sometimes? And I just, uh. Wanted to let you know that would be okay. If I’m not reading you wrong. Shit, that would be embarrassing. Maybe you could say something? Or punch me. Whatever. Don’t actually punch me, though, please?”

Bucky isn’t sure he’s ever been this blindsided in his life. “I’m not going to punch you,” he says, to buy himself a few moments to think.

Okay, the Red Skull. Definitely more of a shock than this. Right?

Clint nods about three times, very quickly. “Low bar, but cool. No punching. Or stabbing?”

“Or stabbing,” Bucky repeats, mostly on autopilot, before he fully registers the words. “Wait - Clint. We’re friends. I’m not going to - attack you, or something. You know that.”

“Sorry,” Clint says, shrugging a little. “Defense mechanism, I guess?”

Bucky takes a step forward. He can’t believe that he’s been so obvious, but when he thinks about it - well, he hadn’t been putting that much effort into hiding his feelings, mostly because he had never dreamed that Clint would pick up on them. Not because he thinks Clint’s oblivious - far from it - but because it’s still so strange to him, the idea that attraction between men can just be openly talked about.

“I didn’t plan for this,” Bucky says, letting his gaze fall on Clint’s mouth for half a second.

Clint is starting to look more hopeful than wary, which Bucky likes. “You like your plans. But maybe this, uh, isn’t something we can really plan that much? If there is a something, I mean, I don’t want to assume -”

Bucky takes another step, and leans in a little. There’s no way he’s going to be the one to make the first move. He’s brave enough for a lot of things, but not that.

So it’s Clint that does, and at the first careful touch Bucky feels himself relax into the kiss. It feels - it feels _right._ Like they make sense together. He doesn’t have any more profound explanation for it than that.

Especially not when most of his thoughts are occupied with realising that Clint is very, very good at kissing.

* * *

Day 95:

The two of them are lying on the couch together, with Lucky curled up on Clint’s feet. Bucky’s just finished writing what he thinks is a good essay for the sociology course he’s taking. Clint’s back from a brief mission that he mysteriously called _recruitment,_ and they made four pizzas together a couple of hours ago. They’d kissed for a while, lazy kisses that neither of them tried to turn into anything more physical, and then they’d watched a random Animal Planet show that had turned out to be about very cute penguins.

It’s been a good day. A normal day. 

The kind of day Bucky had once thought he’d never have again.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback always welcome! And [here!](http://ruinscollector.tumblr.com/post/168387449477/so-here-is-my-piece-for-the-winterhwawk-reverse) is the art again, you should definitely reblog it so everyone can see how great it is. Thank you Nuria for being such a great collab partner!! <3


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